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The “crisis” in college math readiness prompted a new inquiry from Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) to 35 universities.
The inquiry seeks to “to uncover the root cause of students’ dramatic decline in preparedness for collegiate level math courses,” according to a news release from the senator’s office. Cassidy chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
“The United States faces a crisis in student achievement at the K-12 level that has begun to spill over into higher education, especially in math,” Sen. Cassidy stated.
“This state of affairs is unacceptable and demands immediate corrective action,” he stated. “To that end, as Chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, I am launching an inquiry to better understand the prevalence and root causes of declines in math preparation at selective institutions of higher education.”
Harvard University, Columbia University, Cornell University, and the University of Chicago are among the elite higher education institutions that are asked to turn over data to Sen. Cassidy.
The requests follow concerns about the math skills at Harvard and elsewhere.
“The Harvard Math Department will pilot a new introductory course aimed at rectifying a lack of foundational algebra skills among students,” The Crimson reported in Sept. 2024.
“Students don’t have the skills that we had intended downstream in the curriculum, and so it creates different trajectories in students’ math abilities,” Harvard Director of Introductory Math Brendan Kelly told the student newspaper at the time.
University of California San Diego also reported a decline in basic math skills among its students.
“[The] faculty report shows a 30-fold spike in freshmen needing remedial math classes alongside a sharp decline in writing skills since 2020,” The College Fix previously reported.
Other California colleges are struggling as well.
The Fix reported:
California Policy Center Research Manager Sheridan Karras told The College Fix via email that “a staggering 80 percent of students are placed in remedial courses” in the California Community College system.
“In the CSU system it’s about three in ten students, and in the UC system it’s less than one in ten students,” Karras told The Fix.
Karras said the problem goes back decades, to when “basic skills and direct teaching” were discarded in favor of “approaches like inquiry-based learning and student-centered discovery methods,” The Fix reported, paraphrasing her comments.
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